Dutch Supreme Court rules Netherlands partially responsible for Srebrenica deaths
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The Dutch Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Netherlands is partially responsible for the July 1995 deaths of 300 Muslims in Srebrenica.
Relatives of the victims first sued the Netherlands in 2007, arguing that the country is accountable for the deaths of 300 Muslim men because its troops expelled them from their UN base on July 13, 1995, knowing they would be killed.
Some 8,000 Muslims, mostly boys and men, were killed by Bosnian Serbs in the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, in the east of what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A Bosnian Muslim woman prays during the funeral in the Potocari Memorial Center, Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina on the 11 July 2019, where 33 newly-identified Bosnian Muslims were burried. The burial was part of a memorial ceremony to mark the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre on 11 July 2019, considered the worst atrocity of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed in the 1995 killing spree after Bosnian Serb forces captured the former Bosnian Muslim enclave in Srebrenica on 11 July 1995. EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR
The area had been declared a UN safe zone, prompting thousands of Muslims to seek refuge there when Bosnian Serb troops started engaging in ethnic cleansing.
But the enclave — including Dutch UN positions — was heavily shelled by Bosnian Serb troops. Outnumbered and too lightly equipped to deal with the onslaught, the Dutch UN peacekeeping force, known as the Dutch battalion or Dutbat, requested air support but was denied.
